Friday, August 14, 2009

Marvelous Magic (Part 2)

Okay…so I went through the entire Book of Marvelous Magic and…surprise, surprise…turns out there’s very little duplication. I guess I have some original ideas after all!

Not that I didn’t pay the price for my lunch-time skimming…by brain is still bleeding from the multitude of atrocious puns used to create magic items (the keg of fish and barrel of monkeys spring immediately to mind as does the can of cant; most are mercifully behind a new mental block).

Still, there is quite a few gems of creativity in there, and I would certainly wouldn’t hesitate to throw many of these items into a B/X campaign as a bit delightful (or malicious) whimsy.

The BoMM hat of disguiseIS different from my hat of deception (which is not much changed from the AD&D version…but I had planned on that anyway). The crown of command is similar to the crown of ruling, but only superficially. My wax of sealing functions differently from BoMM’s sealing wax.

Two items, though, are near exact duplicates: the BoMM’s collar of stiffness (did I mention the punning?) and collar of strangulation are pretty much the same as my gorget of protection and gorget of strangulation. Still, I’m going to keep mine and not the BoMM version…why would a collar be lying around the dungeon?

Anyway, since everyone just LOVES the miscellaneous magic items so much (including my buddy Kris), I’ll go ahead and list the ones I have (there are 17 new ones…about 2 pages of text once I set the formatting as standard).

Some caveats:

While I have integrated all items into the Miscellaneous Magic Item table, I am not posting the table…this is due to my lameness of adding tables in HTML. All new items have only a 1% chance of being found, with the exception of wax of sealing which has a 2% chance. The percentage chance of finding other miscellaneous magic items have been adjusted accordingly, though percentages have only been adjusted downwards, not up, and common items are still more readily found than uncommon. This means if an item had a 1% chance of being discovered (like an efreeti bottle or flying carpet) it STILL only has a 1% chance of being found. Elven cloak and boots and helms of alignment change are still the most easily found magic items.

Right now, these are pretty much the FINAL DRAFT. Not everyone may like them and I am okay with that, but I wanted certain items available to have certain effects in a high level B/X campaign. Some might seem strange, inappropriate, or illicit a WTF from the reader. I’m happy to take criticism, but like it or not, these are what are going in the book. Sorry.

At the same time, I reserve the right to not have any of ‘em appear in myB/X Companion. It is possible that one or more will be cut for space consideration.

Finally, the text is copyright by me. Feel free to use any and all of these in your own games, but remember where you got ‘em from. Thanks!